A/N: So. This is a little bit of a mad idea I'm trying. If enough people like it, I'll continue with it. It's basically Jac, Jonny, Mo, Michael, Serena, Eleanor and Edward, and a little road trip to take part in some madness that takes place in Cowdenbeath every weekend for half the year.
Sarah x
Serena jumped out of the car, furious with Edward. To be honest, she spent most of her time these days furious with Edward. He was just so infuriating. She thumped on his front door impatiently until Eleanor, who was staying the week with him, answered. "Where's your father?" Serena demanded.
"In the garage," Eleanor snapped. "Jesus. Wake up on the wrong side of the bed or something?!"
Serena stalked away to the left towards the garage, finding Edward working on a beat up, dented car with a railing attached to the front and not much to the car itself. She took no notice of the fact he was lying underneath it. "She's not going, Edward," asserted Serena. "She's not going all the way up to Fife with you."
"Why not this time?" she heard Edward's sigh.
"Because I said so."
"Well, that just isn't fair. She's a big girl, Serena. If she wants to see the races then it's up to her." He slid out from under the car and she helped him up. "It's perfectly safe."
"Not for you," Serena muttered. Though she hated to admit it, it still made her anxious to hear that Edward was racing in that stock car of his. She hated the idea of him being involved in some of the crashes she herself had seen him get into. Her mind would have even been more at ease if he raced F2s and not saloons. At least F2s were meant to be non-contact. Saloons just knocked each other all to hell, and when Serena watched Edward, she watched with her heart in her mouth.
The phone range. "Grab that for me, will you?" he requested as he picked up a ratchet, socket and spanner. Serena rolled her eyes. Wasn't he too bloody old for this already?
"Edward Campbell's phone," she answered briskly, making a face at him when he smirked.
"Ms. Campbell?" a Scottish voice replied. Jonny Maconie. She made a mental note to set him straight if he thought anything of her presence here. "Um, can you tell Edward we're all up for it?"
"Up for what?" Serena drawled, very suspicious now; where Jonny and Edward were involved together there was bound to be madness. Edward's head snapped up.
"Uh, Cowdenbeath?" he answered her, and she could just see him cowering in anticipation of her reaction.
"And who would all of you be?"
"Me, Jac, Mo, Michael..." he trailed away. Great. Half the hospital was going to Fife so Edward could show them all what a child he still was. He acted like a teenage boy.
"He's taking you all up to Racewall?" she demanded. "Why? There must only be one meet left this year!"
"Yeah, it's the Superbowl weekend," Edward reminded her, and she quickly remembered that there was always one big weekend where everything was won and everything went slightly mad.
"Dad!" Eleanor called, sauntering into the garage without looking, and therefore unaware that she was walking in on her parents' disagreements yet again. "Which race am I doing?"
Serena froze. "Um, yes, Jonny. I'll tell him." She hung up the phone and rounded on Edward with no hesitation. "Did I just hear that right?" she snarled. "You're letting our daughter race that death trap?!"
Edward stepped back. "She's more than old enough," he defended himself. Eleanor, Serena noticed, was letting her dad take the entire rap for this but she was far from innocent herself if she had asked to race. "There are sixteen-year-olds driving them. Ten-year-olds racing the Minis. It'll be fine," he tried to sell it to her, but she remained unconvinced. "She's eighteen now. It's up to her."
Eleanor took a brave step forward, and Serena knew she was about to stand up to her mother. "Mum," she said. "I want to do this. I've watched Dad do it since I was a little girl. I'm an adult now. Think of this as me growing up."
Serena felt ganged up on, and she could tell she was fighting a losing battle here. She briefly felt that she was failing as a mother. "Yes, you'll be all grown up when you're in Victoria Hospital with your neck broken!" Serena retorted. She was panicking at the very idea of Eleanor even sitting in that sky blue car, painted all over with sponsors and the red roof that indicated just how experienced Edward was. But Eleanor was not experienced. As far as Serena knew, Eleanor had never raced a car in her life. She could drive, but she had no licence. But Serena knew that to race a stock car, a driving licence wasn't needed, much to her current annoyance. She almost regretted spending the last year teaching Eleanor how to drive.
"Oh, don't worry," Ellie waved her concern away. "Really, how many people actually die?"
Serena glared at Edward for allowing this. He had left her no option. She knew it would be wrong to bully them into stopping this insanity, even if it was in their best interests to just stay at home. "I'm coming with you," Serena asserted firmly.
Though she watched Edward's face brighten slightly at the prospect, he assured her, "There's really no need. We'll be absolutely fine."
"It's not you I'm concerned about," she snapped. That, of course, was a lie. Even remembering some of his more brutal races made her feel a little sick. But she wasn't going to let him know that. It was a sign of weakness. She subconsciously picked up a long bar and turned it over and over in her hands, trying to dispel the anxiety inside her. "I take it we're all going on the bus?"
"Yep," Edward cheerfully said. "Grab me the airline," he added. Serena's automatic reaction was to start pulling the hose from the reel – a reaction she had not managed to control despite fifteen years away from him and this madness. "Thanks." He attached the air ratchet and started taking off bolts. As she watched him she noticed that he still had her and Eleanor's names printed on the bonnet. She contemplated only for a moment demanding that he removed hers, but found she was quite touched that he still thought of her.
"Why are you taking off the panhard rod?" Serena asked. And then she noticed the bend and amended, "Ah. Never mind."
"Yeah, someone went in the back of me a couple weeks ago."
Tossing a seventeen millimetre socket up and down through the air, Serena was forced to remember just how comfortable those nights in the garage with Edward really had been. Even now she slipped into her habit of picking his tools without realising. She let out a short, soft laugh, gaining a confused look from both her daughter and ex-husband.
Changing the subject before they could ask why she had laughed, she asked, "So. Which race are you doing, Eleanor?"
The girl shrugged. "First heat," Edward supplied. Well, at least it would be over before Serena had time to spend the whole race day panicking. He turned to Eleanor. "I'm doing the rest. Unless your mum wants a go," he added with a wicked smirk. Serena smacked him lightly on the back of his head for even suggesting she drive that retched thing.
"When do we leave?" Serena asked.
Edward looked at his watch. "In two hours. If we leave at about three we'll be there for about ten and I can park the bus."
Serena nodded. "I'll go and pack a bag. Ellie, you stay here and help your father get that thing," she eyed the slightly beat up car with distaste, "in the bus. OK?" With that she stalked out, trying decipher how she had arrived there with the intention of verbally ripping him to shreds and left with the intention of taking a road trip with him.
Why did she let him do this to her? Every time she tried to stand her ground, he turned the tables on her.
Two hours later and against her better judgement, she stood with Mo, Jac, Jonny, Edward and Eleanor outside the house. "Michael, late as usual, I see," Serena smirked when he got out of his 4x4, ten minutes later than planned.
"Serena?" he asked. He looked and sounded both extremely confused and slightly frightened. "You're coming?"
"You don't really think I would allow my daughter to race that thing without my supervision, do you?" Serena challenged the American, her eyebrow raised as she glared at him. He smiled playfully, and she didn't have the heart to hold it against him. He tended to kid around a lot; she knew that he didn't mean anything he said to her.
Edward smirked. "Right. Since Mr. Tardy has held us all up-"
"Hey! Not my fault the lights were broken at the river!"
"-we need to get a move on now. Everyone on the bus!" he clapped his hands together. Everyone besides Serena got on the bus. She rounded on Edward, whose face filled with amused dread.
"If you think you're going to win Eleanor over by making me look like a bitch, you are sadly mistaken, Edward," she warned him. She saw his smirk once more and had to refrain from wiping it off his know-it-all face.
He sighed slightly. "I'm not doing anything of the sort. I'm just letting her make her own decisions for once." Serena had to give him that one; even she could not deny that, on occasion, she was guilty of taking Eleanor's freedom from her. She sometimes forgot that she was not a child. She was a young woman. "Come on," he ordered her gently, his hand on the small of her back.
"Get your hands off me," she snapped. The tingle his touch still so often left was a little unnerving.
She internally moaned to herself and took herself and her overnight bag onto the bus, throwing herself down on the sofa seat next to Michael. "Edward, mate," Jonny said. "This is not a bus! I mean, you could live in this thing!" he exclaimed.
"We have done, for about a month," Edward replied with a sweeping gesture towards Serena. She looked away, embarrassed by the memory of the three and a half weeks they spent before Eleanor was born, travelling around Britain while Serena shopped and Edward raced. Well, she had helped him work on his car as well. That was one thing she had managed to hide from everyone she had ever worked with since divorcing Edward – she could repair and maintain a stock car.
"This is going to be a long weekend," moaned Serena. Jac laughed and opened a bag of Milkybar Buttons, and Mo sat with her feet on the table nearer the back. Eleanor looked mortified by her parents' behaviour, and it struck Serena that she had Edward were bickering like children half the time.
"Look," Edward sighed. "The fridge is stocked, the shower is working, the lights are on, I've got the TV and DVD player to work right...can we all just be on our best behaviour?" he pleaded with the group, though he looked right at Serena when he said it.
"What are you looking at me for?!" she shouted at him. Edward smiled and shook his head; he sat in the driver's seat and starting the engine, pulling carefully out of his drive. Serena turned to Michael. "Kill me? Pretty please?"
"Oh, but then we don't get to see the Campbell family at its best!" Jonny protested, much to Mo's amusement.
Michael let out a laugh and threw his arm around Serena's shoulders. She looked at Edward briefly, only to catch the sour look in his eyes as he looked in the mirror to see her next to the American. With grim satisfaction, she leaned slightly into Michael's embrace. She was glad that Edward was now feeling the jealousy she had once felt, even if it was completely unwarranted, and though she was loathe to admit it to herself, she liked seeing that there was still something he must have felt for her.
Hope this is alright!
Please feel free to leave me a review - tell me what you think and if I should continue or not!
Sarah x